When you're writing you're trying to find out something which you don't know. James A. Baldwin More Quotes by James A. Baldwin More Quotes From James A. Baldwin The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever. James A. Baldwin black-and-whiteforeverpeople We are very cruelly trapped between what we would like to be and what we actually are. And we cannot possibly become what we would like to be until we are willing to ask ourselves just why the lives we lead on this continent are mainly so empty, so tame, and so ugly. James A. Baldwin uglyemptywilling Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands; we have no right to assume otherwise. If we do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world. James A. Baldwin racismcountryhands White people will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this - which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never - the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed. James A. Baldwin and-lovewhitepeople The American ideal is, after all, that everyone should be as much alike as possible. James A. Baldwin idealsconformityshould To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread. James A. Baldwin respecteffortthinking You don't need numbers; you need passion, and this is proven by the history of the world! James A. Baldwin passionnumbersneeds And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky. James A. Baldwin troubleskyworld The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out. James A. Baldwin lightseachildren Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent. James A. Baldwin editorsliteraturewriting In my case, I think my exile saved my life, for it inexorably confirmed something which Americans appear to have great difficulty accepting. Which is, simply, this: a man is not a man until he is able and willing to accept his own vision of the world, no matter how radically this vision departs from others. James A. Baldwin visionmenthinking No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time. James A. Baldwin happenstimefirsts To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger. James A. Baldwin committedliteraturedanger Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house? James A. Baldwin burninghousewant All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up. James A. Baldwin survivalkindnessart People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them. James A. Baldwin wisdomhistorypeople The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment. James A. Baldwin inspirational-loveloversfaces I started reading. I read everything I could get my hands on...By the time I was thirteen I had read myself out of Harlem. I had read every book in two libraries and had a card for the Forty-Second Street branch. James A. Baldwin readingbookhands The moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out. James A. Baldwin kwanzaateamworkfaith But to look back from the stony plain along the road which led one to that place is not at all the same thing as walking on the road; the perspective to say the very least, changes only with the journey; only when the road has, all abruptly and treacherously, and with an absoluteness that permits no argument, turned or dropped or risen is one able to see all that one could not have seen from any other place. James A. Baldwin perspectivejourneylooks
